A total of 19 luminous infrared galaxy mergers , with L _ { IR } \lower 2.0 pt \hbox { $ \buildrel > \over { \sim } $ } 2 \times 10 ^ { 11 } ~ { } \hbox { % $L _ { \odot } $ } , for H _ { 0 } = 75 km s ^ { -1 } Mpc ^ { -1 } , have been observed in the H i line at Nançay and four of them were observed at Arecibo as well .
Of these 19 , ten had not been observed before .
Six were clearly detected , one of which for the first time .
The objective was to statistically sample the H i gas mass in luminous infrared mergers along a starburst merger sequence where the molecular CO gas content is already known .
We also searched the literature for H i data and compared these with our observations .